DREAMING IS OKAY for VIENNA DESIGN WEEK by Susanna Hofer

If play (and listening to Imagine Dragons) is really a way to escape, dreaming is okay. “Dreaming Is Okay“ originated from a cooperation between the Vienna Design Week, the Zinnfiguren Offizin Kovar and the photographers Erli Gruenzweil and Susanna Hofer. The book is based on the theory of Johan Huizigers „Homo Ludens“, which discusses the play element between culture and society. According to his theory, every culture emerges from play. Kovar’s tin figure workshop offers hundred of different figures, an inexhaustible tin made archive of biographies, contemporary history, phantasy, locations and sceneries which open up and infinite space of interpretations. They interlude a playful current of awareness, which does not find an ending. The breakdown into ten chapters comes from the self set limits out of the thousands figures from Mrs. Kovars archive. The new order should detach and decontextualize the figures from its former meaning and biography. For example the dancer Fanny Eßler, originally one of the most famous Austrian dancers of the 19th century is presented as a fashion icon. The match of the main character in Andersens Schwefelhölzchen does not go out, the character evolves into a self reflected dialogue with herself. A cluster of trees images the present climate policy. All these chapters show a compilation of photography still lives and pictures, which document the manufacturing process as well as the material of the research and investigations, which underlines again the playful point of origin. Each of the ten editions comes with an original tin figure from the workshop Kovar. They are designed and hand painted by Max Freund, Theresa Hattinger, Michaela Landrichter, Fresh Max, Stefan Pani, Amelie Schlögelhofer, Paulina Semkowicz, Marianne Vlaschits, Bettina Willnauer and Edin Zenun.